The lesson of the Obama years is that you can have appeasement or transformative progress, but not both
A full 12 years after Joe Biden was sworn in as the vice-president of hope and change, hope is in short supply and the need for change is even more acute. Progressives have a rare opportunity to enact their agenda – but they will need to play the kind of hardball they have backed away from in the past, because Biden continues to send conflicting messages. For every promise of transformational change, he signals a desire to appease a Republican party intent on destroying his presidency.
The stakes could hardly be higher: one out of every thousand Americans has died from a lethal pandemic, with no end yet in sight. The economy is officially still humming along, but millions face eviction, bankruptcy and hunger. Even US democracy is under unprecedented siege by an insurrectionist movement encouraged by the outgoing president and his loyalists in Congress.
He backed his predecessor’s bank bailout program, but then terminated it in the name of deficit reduction rather than redirect it to aid struggling homeowners.
He pushed a stimulus bill, but one that was far too small, which ended up delivering one of American history’s slowest economic recoveries.
He promised a change from a Bush administration that had tried to privatize Social Security, but then formed his own commission to try to slash the program.
He championed a slightly more liberal version of Republican healthcare reform, but steered clear of a more contentious fight for a public health insurance option or Medicare for All.
He touted getting tough on Wall Street, but his administration refused to prosecute bank executives, refused to force financial institutions to accept mortgage losses and refused to break up the biggest banks.
And he effectively shielded the George W Bush administration from any systematic investigation into its Iraq war lies and its lawless torture regime, out of “a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards”.
Passing a bold agenda will likely require an epic confrontation with Republicans, who are already girding for obstruction.
FDR seemed to appreciate that business as usual would not stave off fascism and rescue the country
David Sirota is the founder and Editor in Chief of The Daily Poster
This piece was originally published in Newsweek